


melt

by icicaille



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Body Image, Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Massage, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:41:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icicaille/pseuds/icicaille
Summary: Francis did not think a bad-tempered back deserved much sympathy. There were others who had lost more, suffered worse. Those who lived, as he had, could not rightly grouse about so much as the weather. But when James said, “Let me,” thumbing at the divot in Francis’ spine, Francis could only murmur, “Go on.” James had a way of breaking open his deepest certainties.
Relationships: Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames
Comments: 24
Kudos: 87





	melt

Francis woke to hands slipping under his nightshirt.

There had been gulls and jeweled waters, a breeze whispering at his nape, a helm’s wooden spoke in his fist. A dream of fair winds and following seas. A good, sweet dream, the kind that had eluded him for long months after their return.

Now there were warm fingers skittering along his back.

“James,” he tried to say, which took shape as nothing more than a hum into his pillow.

“Yes?”

“What are you up to?”

“You were fussing all through the night, Francis.”

Francis sighed. “Just stiff in the cold is all. It's fine.” He opened one eye and turned his head toward the window to observe the snow falling in languorous swirls. Something in his neck cracked like a dry twig. “Don’t,” he said, more sternly than he meant, when James laughed.

“That tells me otherwise.”

“So it does,” Francis said, sighing again. The soreness had become a part of him as much as anything else: the black moods, the frostbitten fingertips, the hours mired in unseeing daydreams. The specters, at times, of blistering burns and butchered bodies and Tom Blanky’s leg. They too clawed at him. Partook of his flesh like open wounds that never scarred over.

Thus he did not think a bad-tempered back deserved much sympathy. There were others who had lost more, suffered worse. Those who lived, as he had, could not rightly grouse about so much as the weather.

But when James said, “Let me,” thumbing at the divot in Francis’ spine, Francis could only murmur, “Go on.” James had a way of breaking open his deepest certainties.

In his periphery, he saw James plant one knee on each side of Francis’ waist and carefully lower himself over the small of Francis’ back. Then he reached out of Francis’ line of sight. Francis heard glass tinkling and the pop of a cork.

“This will ease things,” James said, pushing the bedclothes down and Francis’ nightshirt up around his shoulders. His hands returned to Francis’ back, this time slick and smelling faintly of rosemary.

“Hm,” Francis said. “Your hair oil?”

“In Malta some fellows used it in this fashion. Quite pleasant.” James did not pick at this thread to let it unravel, as was his wont. Perhaps he thought silence, not stories, would suit here.

If Francis wanted silence, it was only because James’ touch spoke loud enough for two. He heard it all—the heavy brushstrokes of what James felt for him—in the susurrus of James’ rough palms.

Francis had not been touched like this much before. Not with purpose or delicacy. Like the soreness, he had never found it in himself to mind. It was, at best, a nameless lack. A sharp-edged slice of daydream. One could not mourn something they had never really known.

In any case, he was too ill-used for it. His was a body fluent in the language of wounds and wounding. He had punished himself too much, for too long, with drink and more. It was right. The natural order of things. He had often thought to himself, in his blackest moods: what was a body, anyway, but an eternally faulty tool? He certainly did not admire or value his own. Mostly he wished he could cast it off like some old snakeskin.

James, he knew, was of a different mind. James cherished the ragged body under him in a way that had little to do with desire. Francis had realized it some time ago. The discovery startled him badly, as though he had tripped over a stray boot in the entrance hall and stumbled into revelation.

Some days it was more difficult to take than others. On those days, he became prickly and turned inward when James tried to touch him with anything other than want. A lifetime of abasement did not come unspooled so easily, though he sought, for James’ sake, to fuss at the knot.

“You are very patient with me,” he said.

James was rubbing at the base of his neck now. “Oh?”

“Yes, James. I know I can be hard to—” _Love_ , Francis remembered. “Manage.”

“Well. Just a bit.” James’ tone was mollifying, but abstained from condescension. He seemed to mean it in earnest. “Am I helping?” His hands drifted up and down in gentle surges. They were uncommonly large hands. Exemplary for this sort of work. As a contiguous whole, they spanned nearly the full width of Francis’ back.

“Mm.” Francis nestled closer into the pillow. It did feel good.

As a test, he rose up and arched his back slightly. Held himself there for a moment, waiting. No pain emerged, but James’ hands jumped at once to those planes of flexed muscle.

“It doesn’t hurt?”

On another morning, when the fire had not been stoked so high and he had not been woken so prettily, Francis might have bared his teeth. Retorted that James’ concern was mislaid, for in fact it was _he_ who needed looking after. James with his false canines and hair that no longer shone in the sun.

But James was being solicitous, and his weight across Francis’ hips was far from oppressive. “You’ve cured me, James,” Francis said instead. “A miracle.”

A huff behind him. “You are a skilled dissembler, Francis. But I think a stronger tonic is called for.”

Again the pop of a cork; again the honeyed drip onto Francis’ skin. More of it this time, though, which produced soft, wet noises when James spread it across his canvas. Francis’ nose prickled. A dark, perfumed scent bloomed in the air: wood, herbs, dried flowers. James’ smell. Their bedroom would carry it for days.

“You _will_ tell me if it’s too much now,” said James, who had been slowly kneading the springy flesh around Francis’ waist.

Francis drew in a shocked breath at what came next: the firm drag of James’ knuckles, sinking so deep into muscle they seemed to reach bone. The pressure abated, then returned anew. Beads of sweat pooled in the furrow of his spine. The instinct—strange and unaccountable—to protect his unworthy body burst forth. He could not stop himself from going taut all over, from holding himself rigidly in place. His hands tightened into fists.

But it did not hurt. Not exactly. There was a clean, fresh edge to the discomfort: a fever peaking and breaking, a sickness being sweat out. Francis clung to the sensation as James pushed harder. Shallow, shaky breaths rattled in his lungs. He was sure James heard, and surprised that James did not stop or inquire if all was well.

Still James carried on with the same vigorous cadence. First fingertips, then knuckles, then the heels of his hands. Once he had satisfied himself with Francis’ lower back, his hands began to roam. Steadily they migrated up to Francis’ shoulder blades. With reverent fingers, James traced the twin knobbed wings, the dip between them.

Francis often ached most here, and each catch and release at James’ hands summoned a brittle, bitten-off exhale. James would find no knots under the skin to soothe, however. Only the deterioration of a body that had survived too long. A body that refused to die even when the mind and heart willed it. But that impulse was gone now, ground to dust like bones on shale. Though Francis felt, some days, that his body was too frail and worn for all the heaviness he carried, he had made his choice: life.

James, who had a preternatural sense of Francis’ moods, began to gentle his touch. A long, calming sweep of his palms after every knuckling press.

Francis blew out his breath in relief; his eyes shuttered close. The worst of it was over. He could bask in the slippery glide of James’ hands. The way they warmed and loosened him, made him feel small and cared for.

James’ attentions became dreamlike in their distance. When he rubbed his thumb at the base of Francis’ spine, then ventured lower, Francis hardly noticed. He had been lulled into a daze and did not wish to wake.

“Francis?”

Francis knew what was being asked. Long ago he had surrendered the possibility that his body could yield pleasure. James, with his usual tenacity, had raised this ancient, discarded hope from the dead. For the second time that morning, Francis said, “Go on.”

James’ thumb entered him with the quickness of a bounding foxhound. “How is that?” He curled it in a purposeful maneuver that had Francis gasping.

“Good,” Francis managed. His legs jerked fitfully when James removed his thumb and replaced it with two fingers, both coated in oil. They slid in without resistance.

A contented rumble low in James’ chest. “Look at you,” he said, crooking them fore and aft.

Francis kept his eyes sealed shut. It did not matter that his face was tucked out of sight, pressed into the pillow. Too often pleasure absconded with his dignity. In these instances, he could not even open his mouth without some damning sound taking wing.

James, of course, hoarded every last one of these sounds. Scarcity could make treasure out of rubbish, Francis knew, but it was more than that. James’ whole face became luminous to hear them. Francis could not very well deny him that indulgence, just as he could never deny James a single thing. So when James began to drive his fingers in hard enough to jostle the bed, Francis allowed himself the same indulgence.

“Oh, you do like that,” James said. His voice was limned with wonder.

Francis said nothing. His neck burned. Not with shame, because they had come to the end of that, but with the helplessness of a hare caught in a trap. His cock swelled. Though it was trapped between his belly and the sheets and cried out for attention, he paid it no mind. James’ quick and sure fingers—and, later, his cock—would suffice.

The barrage continued for some time. James breathing evenly above, sustaining his rhythm. Francis squirming below, ecstatic despite himself.

Soon enough, James extracted his fingers and paused. There was another question in the stillness. Francis’ answer, smothered by the pillow, melted into a long, long sigh.

A slick noise followed: James oiling himself.

James stroked Francis’ flank, nudged Francis’ legs wide, and gave a sigh of his own. Francis could translate its significance immediately, which sent a fugitive flicker of pride bolting through him. He drew the damp nightshirt above his head and tossed it to the floor.

“All right,” James said lowly, and speared Francis open. He moved swiftly, with no quarter given. A fine, steady captain in this: smoothly rolling his hips, slapping skin to skin with every thrust.

Together they eased Francis’ hips up. Thighs folded over calves, chest flush with the bed. Francis felt too hot and light to wince at the buckling curve of his spine. Like this, James could fit every inch. The stretch of his cock was impossibly deep, impossibly wide. Francis did not know how there was room enough inside him to allow it. A tangled pile of imprecations leapt from his tongue. He swore to God and Jesus Christ and cursed James himself, all in strangled tones.

James leaned down and pressed his front to Francis’ back, sealing their bodies together with sweat. Still he drove in without interruption. One of his hands remained on Francis’ hip, and the other planted itself beside Francis’ head for ballast.

Francis could feel his cock leaking. He would have reprimanded himself—a terrible mess, ought to have put a bath sheet down first—but sense was nowhere to be found. Only sensation: the keen, insistent pulse between his legs, teetering on a knife’s edge.

One kind of resolution came a moment later, when James dug his nails into Francis’ arse and sobbed Francis' name. The motions of his hips stuttered. He shoved into Francis once more, violently enough to make Francis cry out, then held himself there, panting. 

The flood of James’ spend was unmistakable. Francis shuddered. He had never gotten used to this, feeling full and sticky and overflowing. His thoughts strayed to wild and filthy corners now. He was hungry to be brought off, unruly with longing. He craved more: James’ mouth, licking him clean, tending to him.

When James breathed, “God, Francis, yes,” a cold terror seized Francis. He had not meant to say it aloud.

But James withdrew his cock, a sudden absence that left Francis gasping, empty, aching. James' mouth replaced it in short order: warm as June, lips already wet with spit. They breathed as one, mad and frantic, while James took hold of Francis’ hips and buried his face in the space Francis had made for him.

James was very good at this. He knew when and where Francis needed it: licking long stripes up and down, flicking his tongue from time to time as Francis wriggled under him. He kissed there like he was kissing Francis’ mouth. Opening Francis’ body up with his tongue and retrieving what he had left behind.

Francis wanted to ask, _What is it like, the taste of us_ , but he could only whimper. He flung a hand out behind him, seeking a piece of James to hold onto, a bit of familiar flesh between his fingers. He settled on a curl of James’ hair and pulled it tight as he began to tense up.

It did not take long, perhaps a minute or two. The novelty was too outrageous. Every time Francis imagined what they looked like together, doing this, the shameless profligacy of it, he trembled. It was this thought that ended him: observing his own desire and the plain proof of James’. He slapped a hand to the bed and grit his teeth. Something sublime and indescribable washed over him.

James pulled off him long enough to murmur, “There you are, there you are.” His fingers stroked the creases at the top of Francis’ thighs.

Francis’ lashes were damp when he came back to himself. He sniffed in a quivery breath that filled his lungs. James held him still and close, which Francis was glad of; he suspected he would crumple otherwise.

Finally, James rose from the bed and went to putter around on the dressing table. Looking for what, Francis did not know. James liked to anoint himself with sprays and creams when he could—a luxury that Francis felt was very much earned.

Francis rolled over and stretched out, enjoying the pliancy of his limbs. He fancied himself made of clay, having been worked over by strong and capable hands. Altogether well-used.

“Shall I get you a fresh nightshirt?” James asked. He looked over at Francis.

Francis crooked one knee up, considering. He was aware that James could see the entirety of his bare body, illuminated not by desire but by the bright, shrewd noon sun. “Not just yet,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> I owe two debts of gratitude: first to [djsoliloquy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/djsoliloquy), who prompted me to write a drabble based on this idea (which obviously spun out of control); second to [kt_fairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kt_fairy/pseuds/Kt_fairy), whose beat about Francis getting topped then rimmed I gratefully borrowed (you can read said fic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23787940)).
> 
> You can find me on twitter at [icicaille_](https://twitter.com/icicaille_).


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